


offing

by astarisms



Series: natan week 2019 [4]
Category: Satan and Me (Webcomic)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Prompt Fic, Reflection, Suggestive Themes, THIS IS MY FAVORITE OF MY FICS AND IF YOU READ ANY OF THEM AT ALL PLEASE READ THIS ONE, coast
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-20 09:29:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20225596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astarisms/pseuds/astarisms
Summary: the coast was the beginning of the end, but natalie wants it to be the beginning of… well, the beginning.





	offing

(n.) the deep, distant stretch of the ocean that is still visible from the land; the foreseeable future.

Lucifer hates even the mention of it. The good memories attached to the coast do an abysmal job of overshadowing the bad ones. He can’t think of her dripping wet and pouting, of her spiteful determination to scale the cliffside, of her calling him her guardian angel, without recalling everything that followed.

And though she is _alive_ and _whole_, those memories are the ones that haunt him.

Her body on the bed, blue lips and sunken eyes and skin that’s grown cold. The thought that he had failed, that she had _trusted him_ and he had all but thrown her into Hell himself. The dull ache of the jagged scars on his back, a reminder of what he had given up to bring her back. 

He feels the loss of her so acutely in his memories that sometimes it’s hard to remember that she’s here. 

It’s why she’s not going to win this one.

“Absolutely not.”

She huffs, blowing her bangs out of her face. She had changed them again, cutting them until they fell straight across her forehead. She claims she likes them, and he knows she does. He also knows that they annoy her endlessly, because of the impatient way she brushes them out of her face every few minutes. 

He knows that once they grow out, she’s not going to recut them. 

“Why not?” 

“Because I said so.” He returns his eyes to the book he’s reading, though he watches her get up out of his periphery. He crosses an ankle over his thigh and moves the book out of her reach, but he knows his attempts will go unrewarded. 

She plucks the book out of his hands and climbs over his leg, until she’s seated in the crook of it. 

“That’s not an answer,” she says, waving the book just out of his reach. “I have vacation days! I want to use them.”

“No one said you couldn’t use them.” He abandons the effort to reclaim the worn paperback and leans back. Natalie folds down the top of the page and drops it to the floor, satisfied that she’s won his attention.

“But you said—”

“I said no coast. We can go to the mountains, or to—”

Natalie throws her hands up, and he briefly entertains the idea of shifting until she topples off of him. 

“I don’t want to go to the mountains. I want to go to the coast,” she repeats emphatically. 

“I already took you to the coast,” he says, trying to keep the bite from his voice, but Natalie catches the edge. He sees the recognition in the way her eyes light up as she pieces together his reluctance. 

Nearly six years by his side has made her an expert in all things Lucifer. He resents her for it. 

“The last time didn’t end very well for either of us.”

“You don’t say,” he says, voice so thick with sarcasm that Natalie frowns at him. Her bangs fall into her eyes and she swipes at them.

“All I’m saying is that I — well, I got sick. And you—”

“I’m well aware.” She doesn’t flinch at the growl, but she doesn’t complete the thought either. 

“Frankly, I think you’re being unreasonable, and a sourpuss to boot.” 

Lucifer is shocked at the conviction with which she delivers the words, and even more so that anything she can say or do at this point can still manage to shock him.

“_I’m_ being unreasonable? Did you just hear yourself?”

“Of course I did. I said it, didn’t I? No, don’t — just listen to me for a second, will you?” 

Lucifer bites his tongue against everything he wants to say with a glare. Natalie shifts closer on his lap, out of the cradle his crossed leg makes, and he returns it to the floor. She takes one of his hands in hers, sweeping her thumb over his knuckles.

“Bad memories, I get it. The coast is where I got sick. And that led to me dying. And, I guess, led to me going to Hell, too.” He inhales sharply and glowers at her more intensely, but she meets his eyes and raises his hand, flattening his palm to her chest, just over her heart.

He feels the steady beat of it, and Natalie smiles.

“I’m here. Thanks to you, I’m here. And I don’t want to live the rest of my life running away from the bad memories. I want to make so many good memories that the bad memories seem like a bad dream from a long time ago.”

She pauses, curling her fingers around his, to see if her words have had any effect on him. He’s still glaring at her, but it’s not as fierce anymore, and her smile widens.

“I want to make them with you. The coast doesn’t have to be a scary place.”

“I’m not scared,” he says immediately, and it sounds petulant and childish to his own ears. Natalie laughs, throwing her head back. It’s loud and grating and Lucifer doesn’t think he could live without it. 

When she calms down, she shimmies forward a little more, until she can wrap her arms around his neck and play with the hair at the nape of his neck. He doesn’t believe for a moment she doesn’t know exactly what she does to him. 

She’s not 18 and naive anymore. She’s 23 and that mischievous little glint in her eyes is familiar, but there’s a wickedness to it now that only confirms his suspicions. 

“Then you’ll take me to the coast?” she asks with perfect innocence, leaning in close. “Where we can make some new memories? Better ones?” 

He hates the way her gaze drops to his lips. He hates the way she fits against him. He hates that she knows exactly how to get him to give in. 

Most of all, he hates that he doesn’t really hate any of it. 

“…I’ll think about it,” he finally says, as much as he’s willing to relent today. She squeals in his ear and he winces. Natalie drops a kiss on the tip of one point as an apology, before scrambling off of his lap to go make arrangements he knows he’ll have to redo later.

He sighs. 

x

Natalie threads her fingers through his, pulling his arm tighter around her shoulders and pressing herself deeper into his side. He looks down at the top of her head, the dying sunlight casting her in pinks and oranges and yellows. 

His chest tightens at the memory of what happened last time they were here. She had put her trust in him, had believed without question that he would save her from Hell, that he would protect her, that he would—

Natalie sighs, utterly content where she’s burrowed against him, pulling him out of his own head. He still wonders sometimes, how she did it — how she crawled under his skin and carved out a place for herself inside his bones without notice, not until it was too late to do anything about it. 

“It’s even prettier than I remember,” she says, and he hums in agreement even though his eyes haven’t touched the horizon in quite a few minutes. He tracks the sun’s descent on her skin, the warmth of the sky bleeding into something cooler, darker. 

She laughs, too loud and too sudden against the peace and quiet they’ve been enjoying, and Lucifer forces his features into a frown to hide the fact that he had been watching her like some kind of lovesick idiot. 

“What is it?”

Shifting until she was upright beside him and releasing his hand, she turns to face him. His arm returns uselessly to his side, and he curls his fingers into a fist to resist the urge to pull her back into him. 

“I was just thinking of the last time we were here. Of how much of a jerk you were,” she says, a cheeky grin tugging at the corners of her lips. He opens his mouth to remind her that he’s still a jerk, because he’s still the Devil, and if she needed the reminder he would be more than happy to provide it, but he doesn’t get the chance.

She scrambles up onto her knees, and shuffles forward until she’s settled between his legs. 

“Well, okay.” Her voice drops a little conspiratorially, as if she were sharing a secret he hadn’t asked for. She props her arms against his upraised knees, and leans in closer. “I was thinking about how we were both such idiots, for so long. I’ve loved you since Oregon, you know,” she admits casually, as if it were an afterthought, as if it were common knowledge that she had loved him before she saw the worst parts of him and unwaveringly continued to do so afterwards.

Natalie continues on, though, oblivious to the state she’s left him in. “That’s six years, right? Six years that you’ve been such a big part of my life.” She sighs, wistfully, and looks over her shoulder at the darkening horizon. “We’ve made a lot of good memories, don’t you think?” 

Lucifer isn’t sure if she’s expecting an answer or not, and he thinks it’s a dumb question, anyways. Of course they’ve made a lot of good memories. He stays silent, waiting for the rest of her rambling, because of course there’s more. This is Natalie. There is always more. 

But she’s strangely quiet, turning in between his legs until she’s seated again, her back to his chest. They watch as the sky turns purple and the first of the stars begin to wake, winking into existence. She rests her head in the space between his neck and shoulder, and he wraps an arm around her. 

And because he knows Natalie, more intimately than he’s ever known anyone, he’s not surprised when it turns out there is, in fact, more. 

“I know you think this place is the beginning of where my life ended,” she says, and for once she seems mindful of her volume. He tenses, and she wraps her arm around his, looking up at him. “I promised you better memories, though, didn’t I? Lucifer?” He meets her eyes, and nods, though even he can tell it’s stiff. 

Natalie smiles and it’s like he’s watching the sunset all over again. 

“I don’t want you to think like that anymore.” 

“Yeah,” he says, trying to force a scathing note of sarcasm into his voice but it comes out rough, “no problem. I’ll just stop.” She tilts her head at him, like he’s said something funny, but he doesn’t think he has. 

“What I mean is, I don’t want this place to be the beginning of the end of my life anymore. I want it to be the beginning of the beginning of ours.” 

He raises an eyebrow at her, because all of that sounds like nonsense to him. Natalie puffs her cheeks out, and even in the dark he can tell that she’s blushing. His other eyebrow joins the first in surprise. Natalie doesn’t do that often, too straightforward and sure of what she wants to be embarrassed by it. 

She grabs his hand and takes a deep breath, and tries again.

“Marry me.”

Lucifer stares at her in utter incomprehension. He blinks, waiting for the rest, for the punchline, but Natalie just stares at him, looking both expectant and a touch nervous. She squeezes his fingers after a moment, searching his eyes. 

“What?” he finally manages, and it sounds strangled to his own ears but he doesn’t have the necessary wits to care at the moment. 

“The only future I can see for me is one that has you in it, Lucifer,” she says earnestly, and it feels like he’s fracturing from the inside out. “So… will you marry me?” 

He searches her eyes, her face, wondering what the joke is, but there’s no joke. There’s just Natalie and her open expression and her hand in his.

“Lucifer?” she asks, hesitant after his long silence, raising up a little. 

“And here I thought you were getting a little smarter,” he says at last, but Natalie doesn’t have the chance to voice her indignant complaint before he’s leaning down to steal her lips. She grins into the kiss, turning to wrap her arms around his neck.

“Is that a yes?” He pulls her closer to him in response, and she laughs, threading her fingers through his hair. 

For the first time in years, he doesn’t feel the ache of her loss. He only feels her, warm and alive in his arms, kissing too eagerly and laughing too loudly. 

When she pushes him flat on his back so she can straddle his waist, crowned in moonlight, her eyes gleaming like the stars, he can think only of how he wants to spend the rest of her life by her side. 

Her smile turns mischievous, and he watches in stunned awe as she pulls her shirt up over her head, dropping it somewhere beside them. She takes his face in her hands and leans down, brushing their lips together.

“I promised you better memories, didn’t I?” she whispers cheekily, and he pulls her down against him with a groan. 

He supposes the coast is not such a terrible place, after all.


End file.
